Prioritization of Rural Municipalities (RMs) of Central District in Jiroft County of Iran, Based on Rural Development Criteria

This study aimed mainly at prioritizing rural municipalities (RMs) of the central district of Jiroft county in Kerman province of Iran according to the standards of sustainable rural development. First, the most important criteria were identified in a desk document method. Then, using the Delphi technique and the views of experts and subject specialists and village councils (25 individuals) in three stages, the most important criteria were primarily classified into five main issues and finally into the 42 sub-criteria. The alternatives to this research included the RMs of five villages of the concerned central district. Finally, fifteen experts in rural affairs were asked through focus group interviews with counsel to compare the pairwise test criteria and alternatives based on the criteria. Results revealed that among the criteria for measuring sustainable development, the greatest relative weight was of the construction and infrastructure critera with the value of 0.330 and the lowest relative weight was assigned to the criteria associated with communication with organizations and institutions with the value of 0.087. A number of the assigned sub-criteria to the sustainable development included improving the health services, encouraging the rural people to develop handicrafts and efforts to promote the development and marketing of rural products, making efforts to enhance social capital of the village, avoiding the pollution of water and soil in the village, and cooperating with the council and prefect for review and issuance of business licenses which were ranked first in each concerned criterion to determine the performance of the RMs.